Scribner's Magazine, July, 1891



The view from Mrs. Manstey's window was not a striking one, but
to her at least it was full of interest and beauty. Mrs. Manstey
occupied the back room on the third floor of a New York boarding-
house, in a street where the ash-barrels lingered late on the
sidewalk and the gaps in the pavement would have staggered a
Quintus Curtius. She was the widow of a clerk in a large
wholesale house, and his death had left her alone, for her only
daughter had married in California, and could not afford the long
journey to New York to see her mother. Mrs. Manstey, perhaps,
might have joined her daughter in the West, but they had now been
so many years apart that they had ceased to feel any need of each
other's society, and their intercourse had long been limited to
the exchange of a few perfunctory letters, written with
indifference by the daughter, and with difficulty by Mrs.
Manstey, whose right hand was growing stiff with gout. Even had
she felt a stronger desire for her daughter's companionship, Mrs.
Manstey's increasing infirmity, which caused her to dread the
three flights of stairs between her room and the street, would
have given her pause on the eve of undertaking so long a journey;
and without perhaps, formulating these reasons she had long since
accepted as a matter of course her solitary life in New York.

She was, indeed, not quite lonely, for a few friends still toiled
up now and then to her room; but their visits grew rare as the
years went by. Mrs. Manstey had never been a sociable woman, and
during her husband's lifetime his companionship had been all-